“Opera is for everybody,” soprano Emily Pogorelc said in a recent interview with The Michigan Daily. “We all desire connection,” she added, “[and] the act of making an opera is an act of community.”
The Santa Fe community can connect with Pogorelc this summer, when she makes her Festival debut on July 23 in a noontime recital with award-winning pianist Julius Drake, and when she appears at the Santa Fe Opera singing the role of Musetta in Puccini’s La bohème.
Pogorelc, a Milwaukee native, graduated from Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music in 2018, the same year she won the Ginette Theano Prize for Most Promising Talent at the inaugural Glyndebourne Opera Cup. Over the past few years, she’s won several other honors and awards, and she’s made a name for herself as an emerging international force, with BBC Music Magazine hailing her as a “sensational” artist who’s “rapidly becoming a star on the European opera scene.”
In 2020, just two years after graduating from Curtis, Pogorelc began a four-year stint as an ensemble member at the Bavarian State Opera, where she’s appeared as Pamina in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Gretel in Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel, and Adina in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, among other roles. She’s enjoyed additional operatic engagements around the world, including ones with the Dallas, Detroit, Royal Danish, and Washington National operas; Opera Philadelphia; the Semperoper Dresden; and the Glyndebourne and Glimmerglass festivals. In March 2024, Pogorelc—to rave reviews—made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Lisette in Puccini’s La rondine, with OperaWire praising her “charisma” and “fantastic lyric coloratura voice” and noting that she “lit up the stage every time she entered.” New York Classical Review called her performance “excellent” and added that she delivered “the most characterful performance of the night,” while The New Criterion said she “acted up a treat” and “came close to stealing the show.” Since her acclaimed debut, Pogorelc has returned to the Met for highly praised productions of La bohème (as Musetta) and The Magic Flute (as Pamina).
During Pogorelc’s July 23 recital with Julius Drake, you can experience her extraordinary vocal—and star—power within the intimate setting of St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art. The duo opens their hour-long program with two towering song cycles: Mahler’s deeply moving Songs of a Wayfarer, which evokes the anguish of lost love, and Korngold’s gorgeous Songs of Farewell, written while the young composer was coming to terms with the losses of World War I and with being separated from his future wife. Pogorelc and Drake also perform a selection of exquisite art songs by the Austrian master Hugo Wolf as well as an alluring set of songs by Britten called On This Island, which features text by the celebrated British American poet W. H. Auden.
Tickets for the Festival’s 2025 season are on sale now. Explore our 2025 calendar here, and purchase your tickets either online or through our Box Office at 505-982-1890.